Sandler’s latest chronicles unsung explorer Hudson

Friday

Jun 22, 2007 at 2:00 AM

By Gabriella Burnham I&M Staff Writer

Corey Sandler is a journalist, not an historian. So, when he came upon the story of Henry Hudson, who he considers one of the greatest but least-known explorers in history, he set out on a 25,000-mile, six-month voyage to discover his true story.

“What I was really trying to do was bring his story to life. The amazing thing to me is how little we know about this man. He made the first voyage in 1607 and died in 1611 and we almost know nothing about him before then,” said Sandler, who has written approximately 150 books in his 25-year career, ranging from travel, to personal computing help, to “Watching Baseball,” co-written with former Red Sox star and current NESN commentator Jerry Remy.

Sandler moved to Nantucket with his wife Janice about 20 years ago to become a full-time author. Before then he worked as a reporter and correspondent for the Associated Press, Gannett Newspapers and Ziff-Davis Publishing.

His latest book, “Henry Hudson, Dreams and Obsession,” retraces Hudson’s four failed voyages in a search of a northern passage from Europe to Asia.

“The interesting thing about Hudson is that most of us have a vision of a captain as a person being in command. Captain Ahab (from Herman Melville’s ‘Moby-Dick’) is the one from Nantucket. The truth of the matter was, in Hudson’s time, many of the captains had a very tenuous hold over the crew. Hudson had four known voyages, and at least four mutinies, and the last of those mutinies resulted in his death,” Sandler said.

Hudson’s first trip started in London on a Dutch ship (although he was actually of English descent) to the region of Svalbard in the northern Greenland peninsula.

Unfortunately, Svalbard was not intended to be the final destination of Hudson’s trip: it was the ice that trapped him there.

“He saw lots of whales, walruses, seals. But he came back in failure. A side effect of that, though, was that whole legions of sailors said, ‘Whales, walruses?’ For the next two years that (became) one of the major whaling areas in the world. One of the few areas that Nantucketers didn’t go,” said Sandler.

Although a point of failure for Hudson, Svalbard was one of Sandler’s favorite, but most bizarre, stops on his journey.

“We were there during the arctic summer . . . It’s only three months of full daylight, and six months (feel like) five in the afternoon,” said Sandler, referring to the phenomenon that occurs in latitudes north of the Arctic Circle and south of the Antarctic Circle where the sun is visible for 24 hours.

In Hudson’s time, Svalbard was one of the most extensive coal-mining regions in the world, and not much has changed today, said Sandler, who fuses both historical content and modern-day impressions of Hudson’s geographical benchmarks in the book. “I was sailing. We were leaving Svalbard and it was midnight and bright sunlight, and looking out the balcony of our cabin I saw Bear Island. It sent shivers down my spine.

Nothing has changed,” he said.

Hudson’s next three voyages developed a similar pattern to the first: a fruitless battle with the frozen conditions.

His second voyage searched for a Northeast Passage along the coast of Norway to Novaya Zemlya in Russia. But the ice fought hard, so Hudson was forced to retreat back to England once again, Sandler said.

His third voyage in 1609 faltered not because of ice, but because of an unscheduled U-turn toward the coast of New England. Who knows why: it may have been a mutiny, or a capricious change in company representatives. But that’s where Hudson ran into a little island off the coast of Cape Cod, known to us now as Nantucket.

“He mentions where he is roughly, but he knows about Martha’s Vineyard. He also knows this is not the way to China. So he notes that he had sailed off the coast of this little island, on his way down to Jamestown.”

It was on this voyage that Hudson ventured into the river that now bears his name, his best-known (but probably least impressive) accomplishment.

The fourth journey was a one-way trip over the northern coast of Canada and into the depths of the Hudson Bay, where the ice gripped his boat, stirred a mutiny, and threw Hudson shoreward. It was there that his crew left him to die.

“The essential question is: Is Hudson one of the greatest explorers, the worst captain, or an accidental tourist? I think the answer is he’s all three. He never made a dime for himself or his backers. But everywhere he went, went on to have this great moment in time. And each of these places is spectacular and remote,” said Sandler.

Even though the work is now completed and on bookstore shelves, Sandler said he has not tucked Henry Hudson away for good.

“I’m going back to the North Pole next summer. I’m going to give some lectures there and this fall aboard some cruise ships, so I’m going back to some of the same places, and I’m sure I’ll find new things,” said Sandler, who will be promoting the book as a destination traveler aboard Celebrity cruise line and Silversea cruise line.

As far as the book, Sandler said its reception has been positive: “I travel so much and love to travel, but one of the things about travel for me is finding places that are either frozen in time, or so very different from what we consider them to be,” said Sandler. “It’s a fabulous story and it was a story that needed to be told.”

For more information about author Corey Sandler and his latest book “Henry Hudson, Dreams and Obsession” check out www.hudsondreams.com.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.

Original content available for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license, except where noted.
The Inquirer and Mirror ~ One Old South Road, Nantucket, MA 02554 ~ Privacy Policy ~ Terms Of Service